Blog Google introduces Chrome OS
On July 07, Google introduces new Chrome OS, which ” is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks”.
After successful launch of Google Chrome browser 9 months ago, Google decides to extend the Chrome browser functionalities to the operating system arena. From the offical source and other reviews, it looks like Google Chrome OS is a Linux-based operating system that is supposed to be web friendly like Google Chrome. Google’s another successful OS, Android has already targeted at smart phones and netbooks. It seems that the Google Chrome OS and Android has some areas that overlap.
Google also plan to set up a community with its partners to support this Chrome OS. A new Chrome OS will needs a market, good applications, user experience, user support,etc to support it. Is there a market for Chrome OS. Linux OS is free and also open-source. Although it has a substantial user based but it has yet to overtake MS Windows.
A final thought, I am now using Google Chrome to post this blog. I remembered an occasion that I need to install new Adobe Flash Player plug-in. I have to download plugin files for Windows, copy them to some location on my PC to enable it to work. To a layman, copy files to some location is too much of a hassle. Compare to just need to click on the download link and install on Internet Explorer and even Safari.
For MS Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, there are installation files that target these OS platform specifically. If I have to download install files for Linux OS (like rpm, bin or even gzip files) to install in Chrome OS, then it really become just another OS platform.
Though Mac OS X is based on Unix, Apple does better as these files has its own extension and I won’t get confused with them. May be Google should look at how to improve user experience and better integration with those big player.
Another issue is the internet security issue. If Chrome OS is going to be light weight, web-enabled and web-friendly, how is it going to solve the internet security issues. With all these concern, we have to wait and see whether Chrome OS will it be a flopped or success?
Fighting Spam and Helping to digitise book
Recently, I started to received hundreds of spam comments through my blog. I am frustrated with the email notifications sent by wordpress. I took alot of time deleting the emails and spam comments from my blog and mailbox. The spammers often target wordpress blog comments or even email forms.
I try to search for solutions to remove the spam. The most popular is Captcha using distorted words as authentication mechanism to fight spam. I experimented with 2 implemetation of Captcha – SI Captcha for Wordpress plugin and WP-reCaptcha plugin.
SI Captcha for Wordpress has audio playback and nice interface but I have problem displaying the Captcha images on my server. I prefer WP-reCaptcha as it is easy to incorporate to my mail form and blog without any hazzle. Some more it has the novel idea of helping to digitize books while using the Captcha for security purpose. The distorted words we entered in the reCaptcha are used to digitize books. So, we are not wasting our time typing irrelevant words but actually helping the world. Such a genius idea! 
I encourage people use reCaptcha as anti-spam measure on their blog and email form from spam.
